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Realistically, outdoor cats don't travel much. They just hang out in their neighborhood, chill in their favorite spots, etc.
Cats have their territory and that's where they spend their time, doing cat things. It's just that an outdoor cat's territory isn't limited by walls.
There was a BBC documentary a few years ago where they gave GPS tracking collars to a bunch of cats in a neighbourhood and tracked where they went. Each of the cats had their own territory and favourite locations.
I think I watched this one and also a German documentary. It even showed that elderly cats roam way less then younger ones. Pretty interesting.
I loved that doc! It was fascinating seeing the vast differences in territory. I remember one cat who travelled something like a mile back and forth every day on a really narrow area. There was also a pair of cats that had worked out a little territory share amongst themselves, patrolling the same area but always 12 hours apart from each other.
I think you're referring to this scientific experiment.
Murder local wildlife, cause property damage to neighbors, kill neighbors pets, spread disease. Roaming cats suck, and so do their entitled owners who think that everyone's property belongs to their pet
While we're at it, let's get rid of birds that shit on everything, deer that eat our gardens, raccoons that get in our trash, skunks that dig up our grass ....
They brought up how cats disturb the ecosystem and spread disease. You brought up how other animals can disturb people's capital. These two are not equivalent.
Cats are natural in many parts of the world.
The Scottish wild cat for instance came to the UK across a land bridge 9000 years ago.
This thread is full of people that have probably never left America, regurgitating virtue signalling nonsense that they know very little about.
I understand that in some ecosystems that pet cats are devastating, but it's just not true for most of the world.
There's an enormous difference in the natural occurrence of native wild cats and feral or roaming domestic cats.
No one is arguing against native wild cats being around, but against artificially introducing a mesopredator into the ecosystem.
Right... Idiot
I guess some cats love to piss on doors but I don't think much if any property damage is being done by pet cats. I don't think I have ever heard of a cat kiling a pet either.
Cats should be indoor only because they are murder hobos when it comes to wild birds and small animals.
Spreading diesease I can't comment on. What diesease do cats kept as pets spread?
Roaming pet cats scratch screen doors, destroy door mats, piss on doors, shit in gardens, kill wildlife for sport, fight other cats, catch diseases from other cats (pet and feral), get pregnant, get hit by cars, get mauled by dogs. All of these things happen even in countries where cats are “native”.
My neighbors cats used to wreck my herb garden and such. One of them once tried to rip through my window screen to get inside my house and get my pet parrot. I would have made that cat disappear if he had gotten in, and his owner would have never known what happened, and that would be their own fault
Can you imagine if dog owners just opened the door at night, and let their dogs fuck off to do whatever? They'd rightly be charged and have their pets taken away
You got plenty of dogs owners leaving their pets with small children.
And those children getting mauled to death while the owner claims they would never do something since they are such a friendly family pet.
It's entitled of YOU too think that the land, plants, wildlife, and ecology these creatures have lived off of for millennia belong to you. We all share a planet, it's not up to humans to be the arbiters of who can have what and how much and at what time etc etc .
Cats may not be sapient animals, but they are sentient.
No, sorry. We've unintentionally thrown so much of the world off balance by importing creatures that were never in certain places, that we must bear responsibility to bring things back to the balance they were at before we got there, particularly now that we know better.
If that's not possible, we'll do our best to get there. Where are the dodos, buddy? Keep your stupid cats indoors, and stop bothering the local ecosystem more than we already have.
we must bear responsibility to bring things back to the balance they were at before we got there
The idea that nature was in some sort of balance before humans came along is a common misconception. Most ecosystems are dynamic, and change over time. What we are doing is accelerating that change to a dangerous level.
This might seem like an academic distinction, but many conservationists have caused more harm than good by trying to 'freeze' ecosystems at a state that existed at some fixed point in the past. I believe it was George Monbiot who pointed out that the margins of many British roads had higher plant and insect diversity than many 'protected' areas.
Friend, cool it with the pedagogy. If one understands the idea of ecosystems at multiple scales, it follows implicitly that one understands the systems are inherently dynamic.
The point still stands: we've got to understand the environs we've rapidly destabilized and do something to limit our negative influence. Ergo: keeping stupid cats indoors helps the stressed systems by reducing the load caused by a bored apex predator.
Oops I forgot my point in saying all that, which was that if cats have become naturalised to your local ecosystem, then removing them could make things worse. (And by the way, cats are not apex predators.)
By the way, actually, an apex is also known as the summit or peak of a curve, which domestic cats can generally be considered as they are rarely (though not never) predated upon. Wasn't clear that you understood that, but now you do!
Cats are not apex predators. They have predators in both their natural range and some of their introduced ranges. Cats bury their poop (probably) so they don't broadcast their presence to any nearby predators.
I'm glad you enjoy your opinion. It's not correct, but enjoy anyway!
Or, see the wildfires in North America, caused largely by prevention of natural wildfires, resulting in a century of surplus of dead organic matter and primed with climate change-induced drought.
Blah blah blah, legally your cat is your PROPERTY. And if your pet becomes my pest on MY property, it will be dealt with as such. I don't live in the wild, I live in my home on my property, keep your shit bag cat off of mine.